Blue Ghost has first completely successful private lunar landing
(NewsNation) — Firefly Aerospace just had the first completely successful private lunar landing, with Blue Ghost spending two weeks conducting tests, including nuclear drilling and radiation toleration.
Ray Allensworth, program director, joined NewsNation to discuss the mission. She said that while humans landed on the moon decades ago, the cost of missions limited how much could be done in terms of space exploration.
'Traditionally, these programs cost billions and trillions of dollars to run,' she said. 'This is $100 million, which isn't cheap, but in the grand scheme of things, is very affordable for sending science missions to the moon.'
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That's important because establishing a more sustained human presence on the moon is critical to sending crewed missions deeper into our solar system.
The payloads Blue Ghost is carrying are part of that effort.
'They're gathering all this data that will show us what it's like to exist on the lunar surface or below the lunar surface, and it will inform all those future missions,' Allensworth said.
She noted there is also economic benefit to being on the moon, with companies looking to find elements and minerals that could potentially be brought back to Earth.
After the moon, Allensworth says the next big step for space exploration will be missions to Mars.
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